Discourage

Have you ever thought about the word “discourage?” It’s so dismal sounding. Even “dismal” is dismal sounding. It makes you want to sigh and eat something comforting… like doughnuts.
You know my husband? I’ve mentioned him a time or two.
He is a goal setter. He’s driven by his goals, and he’s accomplished some very important ones.
And then there’s me. I have goals here and there, but I’ve given up on the whole “New Year’s Resolution” idea because the only person I’ve ever met who actually consistently accomplished their Resolutions was my biology professor in college… and his goals were a little, well, whack.
He walked the state of Arizona from bottom to top.
He spent an entire day and night on the top of his house.

I’m not totally hopeless. I do have goals. I even reach for them. The problem is: I don’t ever accomplish them. It isn’t for lack of hard work, believe you me. I don’t know what it is, actually. My best guess is rather pathetic: bad luck.
I have two culinary goals: to bake a beautiful pie that tastes wonderful AND to take a dead chicken, pluck it, gut it, chop it and fry it.
Noble, aren’t they?
Well… I’ve been baking the HECK out of pies. I’ve baked cherry pies, butternut pies, pot pies, meringue pies… and they’re all uglier’n sin. I’ve tried store-bought crusts, several different home made crusts, but I have never let myself try the kind you buy ready-made. I HAVE to do it myself.
Yesterday, I got to spend most of the day in my kitchen. I had an extra little one at my house, so I skipped over my cleaning day and replaced it with cooking day instead. I LOVE cooking day. I get a thrill out of putting on my apron and MAKING things. It just makes me so happy to create things for my family.
I took what was left of the rotisserie chicken, shredded and froze it.
I made and froze snacks for the kids.
I filled the crock pot to the brim with a hearty beef stew.
I made two loaves of wheat bread and chuckled as I set them on the warm stove to rise… all I could hear was Indigo Montoya’s voice saying, “There will be [bread] tonight!”

And there was bread. And there still IS bread, and it is delicious.

In the middle of it all, my husband came home and I whipped him up a filling and healthy lunch. I was feeling SO GOOD about myself.
I decided, given my streak of kitchen luck, I’d try a chocolate pie. Not just ANY chocolate pie.

LORETTA LYNN’S FAVORITE CHOCOLATE PIE. The story behind her pie is hilarious. She made it for an event and mixed the sugar and salt up. She made a salt pie. Her soon-to-be husband took one bite of it before spitting it all out.

I take comfort in the fact that even Loretta had trouble with her own chocolate pie. What I do not take comfort in is that she was 13 when that happened.
I’m 13 + 13. I should know better.
I started out with bright gumption. I made a flaky crust. It didn’t roll out well, but that was okay! I made a decorative edge and it boosted my spirits even higher. Never before had I been able to make decorative edging… that’s progression! I popped the crusts in the oven to bake them, and the decorative edging was too heavy. The crusts caved in on themselves. There was nothing I could do to save them.

There were cracks in the bottom of the crusts, and some of the sides had caved completely. My gumption’s brightness began to dim, and as I tried unsuccessfully to make the chocolate pie filling thicken, it flickered. After an hour and a half, it went out completely.
I had one hand on the hand mixer and the other on the wooden spoon stirring the puddin’ pot.

At this point, my apron was wearing a streak of chocolate pie filling across the center -war paint if ever there was any.
My counters which had been dutifully kept clean all day were suddenly a dumpster dive.

I began shoveling cornstarch into the chocolate filling in a desperate attempt to thicken it.
In a last ditch effort, I dumped the filling into three separate bowls to speed the cooling (and hopefully thickening!) process and then I put the containers into the freezer.
In the end, I took the somewhat thickened filling out of the freezer, resigned to defeat and dumped it haphazardly into my pitiful pie crusts. I topped them with meringue and baked them.

I hauled the pies to my mother’s house where I had promised to take them. My brother was visiting with his wife and I thought chocolate pie would be a good idea, but I realized as I loaded the hot pies onto cool baking sheets that chocolate pies were a terrible, awful idea. Even the baking sheets I was loading the hot pies onto were filthy -covered in years and years of the consistent torture they’d endured at my own hands as I taught myself how to cook.
How did the pies ultimately turn out?
Well, the meringue pulled away from the edges somewhere between my street and mother’s, and as I cut and took the first piece from the pie… the rest of the pie vomited all over itself.

*sigh*
The flavor was fine. ish.
The discouragement I felt over hours standing over a hot stove and oven was… well, dismal. My make up had been steamed away, and I was tired. I went to bed tired. I woke up tired.
I went to zumba anyway.

On January 9th, after a doctor’s visit, I began working out consistently.  At the doctor’s, the scale silently told me that I’d gained 10 pounds in one year.  The next day I worked out and I kept it up.  I worked my way through Jillian Michael’s 30-day shred.  My thighs screamed in pain.  It hurt to sit. It hurt to stand.  But I kept at it.  I added to my workouts: pilates now and then, yoga now and then, bouts of running, and an hour of zumba each week.  After THREE MONTHS of this, I weighed myself again and guess what?  I had actually gained a little weight.  I cried.  That very day, I began actively keeping up my sparkpeople account.
After painstakingly tracking my eating habits and fitness habits for the last week… I weighed myself again and was told by the silent scale that I am a one-pound heavier failure.
The scale and the chocolate pie MUST be cahoots. I’m suspicious that they HAVE been for many years now.

I came home and broke the news to my husband who advised me to stop weighing myself.
I told him that was part of the program I was following. I also told him I wanted a doughnut. I choked down green drink instead.
Want to know why?
Four years ago, I couldn’t bake bread to save my life. It always ended up coming out the oven resembling a steel brick. This morning, I toasted a slice of wheat bread I’d made myself and it was really good.
Four years ago, I couldn’t even THREAD my sewing machine. Yesterday I made a sheer apron of my own design in ONE hour.
So maybe. Just MAYBE, in four years: I’ll have lost the 10 pounds I gained 2011 that had nothing whatsoever to do with child growing and bearing and everything to do with my grappling with a life-changing trial.
And maybe. Just MAYBE, I’ll celebrate by baking a beautiful pie and serving it to my patient family. They’ll have waited 4 years for that perfect pie, and I’ll have to make it worth it.
They’re worth it.

And I’m worth it too. Even if my make-up IS steamed off and it looks like I have a giant straw protruding from my teeth.

For the status of my chicken plucking/frying goal, please check back in eight years.